It has been almost a month now since I returned from 4 months of backpacking Southeast Asia. My time abroad passed quickly, but nowhere near as fast as the last 30 days seemed to go. A wise man once said “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” But even when you do take the time to stop and look around for a while you can still miss it!

Large companies have trouble innovating because they are so good at doing whatever it is that lead to their growth. The irony is that if the company doesn’t innovate it will eventually go out of business. A good example they use over at Imaginatik is that of a a race car: if your pit crew cares about winning then they’re busy optimizing your entire car for the demands of the day: aerodynamics, gasoline engines, etc. But the “innovation team” believes that the car of the future will be an electric powered, flying, driver-less car. They come to the pit crew and tell them that they want to start changing things based on how they believe the future will turn out. You can see the problem; it’s a Catch-22. Implement the changes based on some possible future innovations and you’ll likely destroy current profitability. Wait too long and someone else will come out with the future while you’re still optimizing the past.

Common innovation literature seems to have come up with the answer, partly due to the way that Lockheed Martin handled things: split them up. That is keep your performance engine cranking because it’s doing many things well: profitability being one of the major ones. But because it’s a large cog that’s slow to change and hard to influence you’re better off putting the smaller, more agile innovation engine in a separate place and disconnecting them. This allows them to learn and fail quickly. Failing quickly is a good thing so long as you’ve structured your experiments properly because this means that you learn quickly. Here’s the problem: if you have a massive gear slowly turning and an extremely fast gear spinning like there’s no tomorrow they’re impossible to link together: you need a clutch.

My daily life had gotten to the point where I was just slowly turning cranking through life; one of the things that I’ve made it my mission to achieve is better insight: and since insights come from intuition and intuition comes from lots of experiences in lots of environments, I decided I needed to spin faster and experience more. Now that I’ve had those experiences I need to make sure that they translate back to my “normal life”. After all, a fat spinning gear off by itself is of no use; it’s only when you’re able to harness that force to propel you forward in life that you recognize it’s true power.

Of all the things that I was looking forward to experiencing in Thailand nothing was higher on my list than riding an elephant. Elephants have always fascinated me: they’re huge, gentle giants shrouded in ancient myths and steeped in historical tradition. Usually standing between 7-9 feet tall (2.2-2.7 meters) and weighing between 3-4.5 tons they’re massive especially when standing right next to them!

At the recommendation of a colleague we booked our trip with Patara Elephant Fam just outside of Chiang Mai. While elephants of ancient days would work in logging, elephants of today are usually on a different path: circuses, walking the streets as their mahout begs for money from tourists, or giving rides to tourists. Many organizations have sprouted up to care for elephants but as you might expect taking care of a multi-ton animal is prohibitively expensive. They eat up to 330lbs (150kg) per day plus any necessary medical care on top of that. The elephant population in Asia has dropped substantially the last few decades and these magnificent, gentle creatures are sadly considered to be vulnerable to extinction. Elephants are still routinely slaughtered en masse for their ivory tusks. Each year about 8% of the remaining 470k are poached and their greatest predator is unfortunately humans.

Patara is a really cool albeit a relatively expensive company (5800 baht or around $190 USD). They rescue elephants. It used to be the case that an elephant was always trained with a man and his son. An elephants lifespan is roughly equivalent to a humans (60-70 years). So this way the elephant can get to know both men and when the father retires the son takes over. But caring for an elephant is just like caring for a child: it’s a 24/7/365 kind of task. And unlike babysitters for kids or kennels for dogs it’s difficult to find someone else to care for an elephant. Which means that a mahout’s job is a 7 day/week gig. No late nights with friends because they have to work early in the morning. Thus many of the younger mahouts decided they would rather not own an elephant and thus these elephants need to be rescued.

Patara is the only elephant rescue center that always has a greater number of elephants than the number of tourists that come each day. This enables the elephants to have a break and not be constantly over worked. Plus the staff all really cares for the elephants; no abuse of any kind occurred. That may seem like it not even need to be said, but in talking with other tourists who attended other camps I heard that the staff would hit or punch elephants as they verbally abused it. I love a good deal, but I love the ethical treatment of animals much more.

After spending some time in Bangkok we decided to start the journey up to Chiang Mai with a 6 hour stop in the old capital city of Ayutthaya. 650 years ago this was the seat of power for Siam. It lasted for about 400 years, and now much of the city is in ruins after an invading Burma army destroyed the city in 1767. It’s still an amazing place to explore and learn about its history.

We packed our huge bags, checked out of our hostel (Lub.D), and waited at a bus stop because neither of us had tried the city buses yet. After waiting for a good 25 minutes for a bus that was supposed to come every 11 minutes we hailed a taxi and asked to go to the train station. He said 100 baht; he capitulated after we both demanded the meter be turned on, and it ended up being only 45 baht. We bought our ticket to Ayutthaya in third class for 40 baht and then our sleeper car ticket to Chiang Mai for 796 baht (around $27). When we asked which train to get on the uniformed agent said car 1, 2, 3 as he pointed at each. We thought he meant 1, 2, OR 3, but what he actually meant was 1, 2, THEN 3. So after settling into our comfortable second-class seats and remarking what a good deal it was we were told that we had to move to third class which consisted of non-reclining seats that were nothing more than thinly covered pieces of wood. But it was only 40 baht for a two hour train ride…or roughly $1.30. I wish Europe’s trains were this affordable!

The Tiger Kingdom is an amazing place! You get to go into the cages and play with Tigers. And by “play” I mean walk up quietly behind them and pet their tails, hind legs, and stomachs. This is something that, because of the obviously liability concerns, would never happen in the U.S. One common critique is that these Tigers must be drugged; but the staff and signs at the facility all say otherwise. They seemed as active as I would expect Tigers to be (clearly I’m an expert since I’ve been around a tiger one time now) and they’re obviously over fed so that hunger is not one of their primary concerns. Visiting is obviously straddling the figurative ethical line, but I’m not going to discuss that here; I’d rather tell you about my experience which was a ton of fun. And an about equal amount of terrifying!

It’s no secret that one of the reasons I wanted to come to Thailand was because I love Thai food. My colleague Maria and I go to this wonderful Thai restaurant in Grand Rapids called Thai Express about once a week. We’re such regulars that unless we specifically ask for them we’re never given menus. In Thailand the food is so good and so cheap that it’s hard to imagine wanting to spend the time creating it oneself. Noodles run $1 or $2 USD. For a good curry add another $1 or so. But I know I won’t always be fortunate enough to have this luxury, so we decided to take a full day Thai Cooking Class with Asia Scenic, so that I can replicate all this deliciousness at home!

They picked us up at our hotel in the morning, and we headed to their kitchen downtown Chiang Mai. We all introduced ourselves and found that our group consisted of Brian and myself, a couple from California Tim and Sarah as well as another couple from Brazil Danielle and Carlos. Our instructor Meow (pronounced just like a cat’s Meow) passed out menus, and we all could craft our very own 6-course feast made up of a stir-fry, soup, salad, curry, dessert, and a spring roll. I chose the pad see ew, coconut milk soup, papaya salad, panang curry, and sticky rice with mango.

“The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.”

– Amelia Earhart

One of the things that we believe at work is the importance of designing one’s experiments properly: if experiments are designed properly then it’s impossible for them to fail. You always learn something and that is, after all, the point of an experiment. So what are some of the hypothesis that I’m looking to test by going through this sabbatical experiment?